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anthems

music is such an amazing thing. the amount of power and passion that can be conveyed by the crescendos and decrescendos, the fortes, and the pianissimos... the soul that is felt when you add lyrics to such swells of instrument and emotion. it's something that words cannot adequately convey or express on their own.

there are so many times when i find myself in tears, or wrought with some other emotion when i hear certain songs, or when i stop and really listen to the words of a song for the very first time.

music often gets at the heart of what is inside of us when we cannot get there on our own.

this is my night tonight:

tea and my nubbiest sweatshirt accompanied by john mayer's "say". i'm lost in thought. partly digesting a conversation peter and i had earlier, partly analyzing the latest episode of glee.

today has been full of the unexpected.

not in bad ways necessarily, but just unexpected. much of what i expected to do, i didn't. i didn't start my day today expecting to be particularly challenged, but i was.

one thing that came up at work was something that i can honestly say i had never thought about in the context in which it was presented. we watched an online video - a talk by author [among other things] reggie joiner. without going into detail about it all, one of his main points was that we all have a picture of what we think various things should look like. [he gave the example of marriage and family. when we get married we all have a picture in our minds of the perfect spouse, and our goal is to conform our spouse to fit into that mold. same thing with family - we have a picture of what the perfect family should do, say, etc.]

but it's not ever like the picture.

his point was that we don't need a better picture, we need a bigger story. God uses broken people in his story - always has. we don't have to be perfect, or even better than what we are for God to use us now. if we're trying to conform everything in our lives, everything around us to the picture of what WE think it should be, we're lost. our focus is on the wrong thing.

and it will never be okay.

we'll never get where we want to be.

but God has a bigger story. he has a better story.

we all have stories. we have all been through something. all experienced something hard. we are ALL broken and damaged people.

every. single. one. of. us.

and yet, God can still use us.

because it doesn't matter what God has brought you out of,

it doesn't matter where you've been, or what mistakes you have made.

GOD CAN STILL USE YOU.

despite what we know about our own selves, in our deepest, darkest places, God knows them too - and He has a bigger story that He allows us into anyway.

so i sit back, and i wonder -- how will i fit? what will my stamp be? what will the anthem of my life be? what kind of legacy will i leave?

some of these things i don't know -- some of them i may not know even when my life is over, but one thing i do know.

i was created as a supporting character to ultimately bring glory to God.

i think that's where we get mixed up. [or at least where i get mixed up.] i have my picture. i think i'm the main character in my life. i think the world revolves around me. i think i'm the most important person because i know me best. my perspective is all about me. so my picture is all about me. about what i want and what i think is important.

and yet we can be so much more with HIM than we can ever be on our own. we weren't created for our own selves. we were created for more.